


A pattern

by hyphabolic



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friendship, Season: Winter in Hieron, Vague spoilers from Winter in Hieron 17 onwards, Winter in Hieron Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22379065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyphabolic/pseuds/hyphabolic
Summary: In the depths of the New Archives, Hella and Adaire discover strange items and stranger feelings.(A slight bit of canon divergence - everyone went to the New Archives together after Rosemerrow and Certain Things didn't happen at the Archives.)
Relationships: Adaire Ducarte/Hella Varal, Adelaide Tristé/Hella Varal
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	A pattern

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hummingbelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hummingbelle/gifts).



“That's a lacquered spoon, Fero, we need a wooden one,” Lem says with exasperation.  
“It _is_ wood,” Fero complains. “There's just lacquer on the outside. And anyway, it's big and it's got a hole in the handle like you said, what more do you want?“  
“Lacquered spoons aren't classified as wooden spoons. They're as different as bowls and cups.”  
“You can drink from both. You can even drink from a really big spoon, actually.”  
“That's not the point!”  
“Ohh, ‘that‘s not the point’! Why don‘t you tell us what the point is. What are we even doing here?”  
Lem rubs his temples and says slowly, “We are trying to find a big wooden spoon with which we can scoop three tadpoles from the pond and put them back in again.”  
“That's stupid!”

Adaire rolls her eyes at Hella, who sighs. They've been at it for hours and everyone’s patience is wearing thin. As Lem begins explaining the classification system for wooden spoons and why it apparently makes an enormous difference whether they're lacquered, oiled or untreated, they continue along the wall of spoons, inspecting each one carefully. There are hundreds of spoons hanging from tiny hooks on this wall alone. To their right is a row of shallow shelves with spoons neatly laid out on them, but they have no holes in their handles, so Lem has told them to ignore them.

“Hey Lem, what about this one?” says Throndir, coming around the corner carrying what looks like a big wooden spoon. It has a hole.  
“I'm sorry, Throndir, that's a ladle.”  
“Oh. What's the difference?”  
“Don't get him started!” Fero says.  
Hella sighs again.

As they reach the end of the shelving and turn the corner, she can see Hadrian and Ephrim involved in an animated discussion further down the room. She can’t tell what it’s about, but Ephrim is pointing at several colourful spoons arranged on the wall and Hadrian is punctuating his words with a wooden… ladle, she supposes. Kodiak is with them, and when he sees Throndir, he comes running up in great leaping bounds with a spoon in his jaws.  
“Oh my god, Throndir, can you please keep Kodiak under control,” Lem exclaims.  
“He’s trying to help!”  
“I know he’s trying to help but I don’t think you understand the implications. If he knocks one of these shelves over, it will be really bad. It will destroy so many patterns. And then there will be so much paperwork. And questions. And they will have to send in a team to put the spoons in their place. And while they’re at it they’ll probably change some category and then they’ll have to redo the whole room. It will be a whole thing. Just… don’t mess with the organisation here. Please. Kodiak, that’s not even wood, that’s driftwood, please put it back and stop drooling on the spoons.”  
“How is he supposed to know the difference?” Fero says, agitation and volume rising. “How are any of us supposed to know the difference WHEN THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE! It’s all just WOOD! You archivists are so pretentious!”  
Hella closes her eyes briefly.

“Come on, let’s see what’s in here!” Adaire says, taking Hella’s hand and pulling her through a door to the next room. It is small and dusty, filled wall to wall with shallow cabinets. Dim light filters through narrow openings in the rock ceiling.  
“Thank you, I was starting to lose my mind in there,“ Hella says. She can still hear Fero and Lem bickering next door, and what is probably Kodiak bumping against furniture, but this room is quiet, and Adaire’s hand is small and warm in hers. 

They both let go at the same time. Adaire quickly takes a step to the side and opens the nearest drawer. It is wide but shallow and only an inch high, and it is divided into dozens of small compartments, each holding a single thimble. She picks one up and inspects it. “Hm. At least it’s something useful.”  
Hella tries one on – silver, engraved with an abstract pattern – but it barely fits her little finger. “Don’t know about that.” She drops it back into the drawer, and as it hits the partition, it makes a quiet tinkling sound, almost like a peal of laughter.  
She opens another drawer at random. It, too, is filled with thimbles. Some are simple, others ornate. There is a clay thimble with a crude bird scratched into its side. A worn wooden thimble with only a few flakes of red paint clinging to it. A golden one with a hawk in flight, more decorative than practical. At least five thimbles painted with cats of varying artistic merit. She touches some of them, feeling their different textures, lifts a few to inspect them closer.  
A gleam catches her eye. It’s a silver thimble inlaid with pearls. It shimmers, white and matt like the reflection of Del on the waves at night. 

Adaire turns to see Hella with a pearl thimble in her hand, caressing it with her fingers. “Wouldn’t have taken you for a pearl gal,” she says.  
“They remind me of someone,” Hella replies absentmindedly, feeling the smooth silky roundness of the pearls. An expression flits over Adaire’s face, something like hurt, but almost immediately it is replaced by a non-committal smile. “No-one important,” Hella adds hastily, dropping the thimble back into the drawer. “We didn’t exactly get along. She’s so annoying.”  
This time the laughter is unmistakable.  
“You stay out of this!” she thinks.  
She can clearly feel the responding smirk.  
She shuts the drawer with a clang and shakes her head to clear it. “Pearls aren't my style.”  
Adaire smiles cautiously. “Okay.”

They go back to looking through the cabinets in companionable silence. Sometimes the drawers seem to have a theme. A bronze thimble made to look like a helmet. A porcelain thimble painted with an intricate ship. A soldier on a horse. But then the next thimble will just be solid wood or decorated with butterflies. Whatever system the archivists use to sort these things is beyond their comprehension.  
Every once in a while one of them will turn to the other to show her a particularly odd thimble. Somehow it turns into a competition to find the strangest one. Adaire is in the lead for a long time with one that has a tiny figure of a mouse in a tailor's outfit sitting on it, until Hella finds one in the shape of a thumb. It’s made of a light green stone and has a translucent crystal nail.  
“You win,” Adaire says. “I don't even want to try and top that.”  
Hella grins and gives Adaire a thumbs up with the thimble. Then she tosses it back into the drawer. As she does so, it hits the partition. There is only a small thump as it hits the wood, just as you’d expect.

She takes a step towards Adaire, who has just picked up a white porcelain thimble painted with an intricate blue pattern.  
“I like that. It suits you,” she says, reaching for Adaire’s hand. “Here, let me.” She places it gently on Adaire’s thumb. It is far too big, but Adaire smiles. 

Fero bursts in. “Oh hey, there you are. We can finally go, Hadrian found it. Because apparently all the big wooden spoons I found were,” he slips into a bad imitation of Lem‘s cadence, “a completely different category.”

\---

It's a few days later, at camp. Hella is sitting by the fire, mending her cloak. She pricks her finger and curses. “You might find this useful,” Adaire says, sitting down next to her. She opens her hand to reveal a white porcelain thimble with an intricate pattern of blue lines. They're like rivers on a map. Or tattoos.  
“I thought it was too big for you?” Hella says.  
“Yeah. But you seemed to like it.”  
“Because it reminds me of you,” Hella thinks. Out loud she says. “Yeah, I do.”  
“Good,” Adaire says, and slips it gently onto Hella‘s thumb.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Secret Samol gift for Hummingbelle. The prompt was:  
> "I would love any of the Winter in Hieron characters encountering a new place in canon (the Buoy, The New Archives, Old Man's Chin etc) OR them discovering something more vague like a new feeling about themselves or the world that happened in the course of the Winter season. I'd love to see their moment of discovery/change, depicted in whatever way you want, metaphorical, literal, go wild!"
> 
> I had great fun with this. I loved coming up with different things they might find in the archives and getting Hella and Adaire to take the first of many steps.
> 
> Bonus: I wrote a little game so you, too, can explore the New Archives. You can find it here: [Make the library smile](https://ili.itch.io/make-the-library-smile)
> 
> Notes: do an image search for thimbles, there's some wild ones out there! The thumb is real.  
> I also really enjoy the current preview of the Wikipedia entry for ladles, which starts with the sentence "A ladle is definitively not a type of spoon used for soup, stew, or other foods." Lem _would_ be a Wikipedia editor.


End file.
